Simple method to rescale tree to a particular mean tip height

Here's a simple trick to rescale a tree to have a particular mean height (if not ultrametric):

library(phytools)
## in this case we will use a random tree
tree<-rtree(n=26,tip.label=LETTERS)
plotTree(tree,mar=c(5.1,0.1,0.1,0.1))
axis(1)
## compute all tip heights
h<-sapply(1:Ntip(tree),nodeheight,tree=tree)
h

##  [1] 2.998386 3.391986 3.502868 3.567715 3.110754 3.365106 2.714611
##  [8] 1.358671 2.152025 2.313791 2.715758 3.055251 3.199052 1.739875
## [15] 3.869145 4.121823 3.534816 3.962804 1.561411 2.536063 3.378451
## [22] 2.719116 2.628788 2.661650 2.900916 2.311506

mean(h)

## [1] 2.898936

lines(c(mean(h),mean(h)),par()$usr[3:4],lty="dashed",col="red")

## decide on new desired mean height
new.h<-100
## rescale tree
tree$edge.length<-tree$edge.length/mean(h)*new.h
h<-sapply(1:Ntip(tree),nodeheight,tree=tree)
h

##  [1] 103.43058 117.00797 120.83289 123.06981 107.30675 116.08072  93.64164
##  [8]  46.86791  74.23498  79.81517  93.68118 105.39215 110.35264  60.01771
## [15] 133.46776 142.18398 121.93495 136.69855  53.86151  87.48253 116.54105
## [22]  93.79704  90.68114  91.81473 100.06830  79.73635

mean(h)

## [1] 100

plotTree(tree,mar=c(5.1,0.1,0.1,0.1))
axis(1)
lines(c(mean(h),mean(h)),par()$usr[3:4],lty="dashed",col="red")

That's it.